What Facebook Live Video could mean for marketers

The streaming video tool, which works largely like Meerkat and Twitter Inc.’s Periscope, was launched about four months ago for public figures like celebrities.

The world’s largest social network is testing a new feature that will enable its 1.5 billion users to use their smartphones to shoot video so other people can see what they are doing as it happens. The Menlo Park, California, company didn’t specify when everyone with a Facebook account and a smartphone will have an opportunity to broadcast live.

The feature represents Facebook’s latest challenge to online messaging service Twitter, which introduced a live video application called Periscope earlier this year. This isn’t the first time that Facebook Inc. has copied others’ ideas in an attempt to ensure its social network remains the leading digital hangout. In recent years, Facebook also has embraced the hashtag symbol, a Twitter technique for flagging major events and topics of conversation, and cloned an option to check into specific places that was popularized by Foursquare. In another move of mimicry, Facebook is introducing another feature called “Collage” that will automatically bundle photos and video taken in the same place or at the same event into a slideshow.

Facebook is touting live video and Collage as a leap forward in its attempt to bring its users closer together even though they may be located thousands of miles apart. Eventually, Facebook CEO Mark Zuckerberg hopes to deploy the virtual reality technology that the company acquired last year in a $2 billion purchase of Oculus to transform video into an even more-lifelike encounter. The practice has forced copyright owners to monitor Periscope for violations of their rights and notify Twitter so it can block or take down the videos.

Facebook’s video tool has the usual vanity hooks: how many people are following a video, a subscription to get a heads up when someone is streaming, and real-time commenting. A big differentiator from Periscope and Meerkat, though, is that when a live stream is done, the video goes to your timeline for people to watch on demand at any point down the road. More from WSJ.D: And make sure to visit WSJ.D for all of our news, personal tech coverage, analysis and more, and add our XML feed to your favorite reader.